Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: Open Season

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Game Name:

Police Quest 4: Open Season

Platforms:

DOS/Windows 3.x

Publisher(s):

Sierra On-Line

Developer(s):

Sierra On-Line

Genre(s):

Adventure

Release Date:

1993

Police Quest 4 seems to be an attempt to re-imagine the Police Quest franchise. Admittedly, I was getting a little tired of Sonny Bonds, his endless department transfers, and his ex-prostitute squeeze. Yet it also comes with the departure of Jim Walls, just when I felt he was getting good. I do not know the story of why he left (and there must be a story there), but Jim moved on to write Blue Force, and Sierra certainly recovered with a feather in their cap. Walls was their ace-in-the-hole as a veteran patrolman himself, so to trump that, Sierra somehow snookered former Los Angeles police chief Darryl Gates to headline and consult for Police Quest 4. Unfortunately, unlike the consultant, the gameplay didn’t benefit from a radical promotion.

For PQ4, the action has been moved straight into the heart of Los Angeles. You play as veteran homicide detective John Carey; a star player with a fairly impressive case record, an impeccably starched suit, and (assuming this line of dialogue wasn’t a joke) he’s a member of MENSA. When one of the department’s own turns up tortured to death in the back alley of a South Central convenience store, Carey is put on the case. He’s soon caught in a web of internal intrigue, gang violence, and an undiscriminating serial killer preying on citizens without an apparent motive (hence, the “open season” of the title.) It’s certainly the most “adult” of the series, though more in themes than in actual visuals, and commendably tries to be a serious adventure through the gritty underbelly of L.A.

Another day in the basement of the Parker Center.

To achieve this, Sierra has composed the entire game from digital source images. Characters, locations, even inventory items are all actual digital stills from various locations around Los Angeles. I suppose that having Gates attached to the project opened a lot of doors, and got a fair amount of cooperation from the department and mayor’s office in general. Not only did he take the crew to shoot in various locations in South Central, Griffith Park, and Hollywood and Vine, you’ll also be seeing a lot of apparently authentic locations from inside the county morgue, civic center, and the L.A. police academy. In particular, multiple floors of the Parker Center (the LAPD’s official headquarters) are recreated in the game. A real L.A. cop would have to tell you how accurate they are, but allegedly they are dead on, and I certainly recognize the exterior from countless episodes of Dragnet. It would seem that if you’re looking for a police adventure closer to complete authenticity, this would be the Police Quest to go to.

This authenticity does mildly backfire. Gates may know Los Angeles, but he hasn’t been a detective for a long time. The result is some heavier-handed “administrative” reality for this game. You will have to qualify your pistol marksmanship, in an arcade sequence similar to the one in PQ2. You have forms to fill out, and a partner whose sole purpose is to store these forms and tidbits in a case record. These forms are not filled out by hand, instead you click your notebook on the form to “transfer” the information over. It does mean that you frequently must click your notebook on items in the scene to “record” them for placement in these forms later. You’ll also need to know when to fill these forms out, and the exact number of the proper form for the situation. You can learn these, as well as occasional non-obvious procedures referenced in the game, inside the manual – a fifty-four page (yet still abridged) version of the actual LAPD operations handbook. If you’ve ever wanted to know how officers are expected to wear their ties, the procedure for administering the loyalty oath, or the guidelines and restrictions for the release of police record information to the public (section 406.10), then this is your game.

The writing is competent, but seems lacking from the previous versions. Unlike the first three, a veteran cop is not writing these scenarios. So you get the feeling that Gates did a lot of “I remember there was this one time…”s and the writers ran with scenarios from that. That is not to say Gates’ presence is not felt. His book advertised by a character, a move I thought was more than a little shameless, and special hatred is reserved for rappers and the press. One character is a rapper named “Yo Money,” infamous for his “cop-killer” songs. The game treats him as an opportunistic little weasel looking to make publicity off of the death of an officer. Another is a female reporter who improperly harasses your character, then turns the incident around in her favor through editing. She represents the entire press in the game, and the press are treated as muckraking leeches looking to spread paranoia throughout the city, and curb the work of honest officers, all in the interests of ratings.

Sorry sweetie, no white power for you today.

Now I can’t imagine why Darryl Gates (Rodney King, O.J. Trial, choke holds, “casual drug users should be taken out and shot”) might have a problem with the press, and how they portray cops. I’m not particularly offended by the one-sided view and mild racism of many subjects and people presented here, but it is noticeable, and some may find it a little hard to take. I don’t think any of the writers have ever met a homosexual, and you’ll meet one in the game, so he’s overly and embarrassingly flamboyant. Your character will awkwardly attempt to censor his words to avoid saying anything that could be taken as an innuendo.

Every black guy you meet in the game is not a street hood, which is good, but those that are have stereotypical “whutchu lookin’ at five-o?” dialogue and mannerisms. Those that aren’t, like the sympathetic mother character, are still unschooled caricatures that talk like they just came from the backwoods. Now I get it. I’m not expecting to go to a burned building in South Central L.A. and meet Jessie Jackson. I also understand that the game has maybe one or two scenes to get a character across, so stereotypes are an easy way to quickly explain the kind of person you’re dealing with.

Still, when every character is a stereotype – from Billy Bob the ignorant auto mechanic to the Korean convenience store owner who “don’t speaka the Engrish too good,” it gets to be a little much. The Police Quest series has never been known for progressive thought or deep characters, and this game is probably the worst offender of the series.

A CD re-release was distributed, with some minor bug fixes and the inclusion of 10,000 lines of dialogue for a fully-voiced version of the game. This is NOT the one to play. It is, so far, the worst video game dialogue I have ever heard. Your character is voiced by an actor far more nasal and smarmy than the voice I attributed to the character as I was reading the text. He’s also got about as much personality as that other “John Kerry” guy. The major problem with his, and all other voices, is that they seem to have been recorded completely without direction. The actors have calm reads and speak clearly, but all lines in voice work are always recorded out of sequence and out of context. It’s the job of the director to know where the line is supposed to fit in the story, and provide that context to the actor. Here, it’s like that never happened. Carey will turn condescending during an interrogation for no apparent reason, and in conflict with the tone of the scene at that time. The narrator, (who vocalizes all descriptions) unnecessarily berates you for simply looking at objects by adding a silent “dumbass” to nearly every line – i.e. “It’s your homicide kit, dumbass.” This guy doesn’t really hate you, he was just never told how the line would be used.

The option to stick with the text still exists in the CD version, and I would highly recommend it. The dialogue, as written, actually is fairly good. If you’re used to previous adventure games, the voices and inflections you will mentally assign the characters are far better than the ones Sierra provided. The only trouble is that the text is rather small in comparison to text in other adventure games, and its blue or white color will frequently cause words to blend into the background. Each line is only up for a certain length of time before automatically moving on, so I was the frequent victim of disappearing text as I strained to read an obscured word.

The mechanics of the investigation are pretty straightforward adventure stuff, and should be pretty familiar to anyone who’s played the previous versions. There’s significantly less emphasis on collecting evidence, instead, you discover it, note it, and point it out to the technician on scene. This game also adds on some standard “take the item now because you won’t know how you’ll use it later” logic, somewhat new for the series. You won’t know why you need to buy glue and an apple, but when you can, you should. The quest for maximum points is still in full force from the previous games. Also, as in PQ2, the core of your game will be held up until you find the important clue needed to proceed. It’s pretty linear because of this, though there will still be copious backtracking across the game’s “days.” However, you will not miss an item needed later, because you won’t get to later until you have that item. This can lead to a lot of frustrating searches, and the desperate trying of everything. Luckily, procedure isn’t as much of a hassle compared to PQ1 or 2, and mostly results only in extra points.

Whether it actually is or not, Police Quest 4 certainly feels authentic. It seems (to a non-resident) to capture a gritty realism of Los Angeles that isn’t present in many films or other games. It’s certainly as jingoistic as the previous ones in the series, taking an obvious pro-police stand while, maybe unnecessarily, deriding or making fools of any groups with an anti-police sentiment. It also, probably through the digitized, real-life locations, and the overwhelming brutality not present in previous Police Quests, inspires you with a sense of awe and trepidation of what it must feel like to have the protection of millions of citizens as your responsibility. I’m sure this is no accident, and I’m sure Gates got involved (aside from the money) to make this game as complete an advertisement for joining the force as he could.

It’s not as good as PQ3, or the VGA remake of 1. It is better than 1 and 2. It also feels like the most realistic of all the games, and might be worth checking out if you really do aspire to become a Robbery/Homicide detective. That abridged manual will probably be worth more to you, though, and a good episode of Law and Order feels more like an accurate portrayal of the streets. It’s still an adventure worth taking if you’re interested, but the constant appearance of adventure game staples keep reminding you that you’re just playing through a video game version of one old guy’s view of someone else’s job.

The Good

Digitized graphics could have been hokey, but actually do a decent job of making an authentic Los Angeles.

The Bad

Not the best investigation you can play, and not even the best of the Police Quests. Terrible readings in the “talkie” version.

About the Author

The J Man loves him some video games, of all eras and types. Finds them, plays them, then writes about them here for curious future generations. Follow him on Twitter at @BurningStickMan for even more musings and questionable life decisions.